I just recieved a company-wide email promoting an internal contest. Unfortunately, with the rules they've outlined, it's impossible to judge who will win:

The first team to have the highest percentage of [its team members] [complete a task] WINS!

Since the judging is based on the highest percentage of team members completing a task, it would seem that the percentages would have to be computed once the contest time period is over. Then a comparison between the various percentages can be made. In order to do that, there must be a cut-off time at which point the percentages are calculated. However, there is no cut-off time -- this contest is over when the first team obtains the highest percentage of members completing the task. That's too many variables -- you need to either fix the percentage that constitutes a win, or fix the end time.

I suppose that these rules can be objectively interpreted as meaning that the first team to reach 100% completion wins. However, I doubt any team will have 100% completion.

Comments

There is one possible way out: If all teams voluntarily submit that they have ended their entry, then it would be possible to compute the winner. The first would be helpful, if, say, two teams reached the same percentage and no other teams had a higher percentage. Then the team that submitted their entry first could be declared the winner.

Did you try to enter? Did you figure out who to send the entry to? I drew a blank there.

I had to laugh about the contest criteria, too. Just how do they figure on choosing a winner? Maybe they set it up on purpose so that they can award it arbitrarily, and relied on the ignorance of the participants to cover for them. Though, I'll bet there is a hard end-date, and that would be either the end of the month or the transition of the process they're trying to save money on.

And the prize! Only in [the company headquarters] would they choose a prize like that! They've either been drinking too much strong coffee, or not nearly enough.